Wild Wives:
Ho-lee Mo-lee. Vintage noir at its finest/ grittiest. Wild, tough, and in the best ways, pretty brutal. Its novella length is also perfect. The story was such a ride, lengthening it would have made it worse. Thanks to the lady at the bookshop who recommended Charles Willeford when she saw me buying James Crumley.

A book in three parts: two novellas and a stage adaptation of one of those. The High Priest of California is a used car salesman. In this case he is a violently amoral sexual predator in fine clothing. His relationship with a mysterious woman is the whole of the story, here presented as a novella and as a play. The play is less successful as the novel because the abridgement loses some of the characters' motivations and pitches into the story later than the book as well as leaving it earlier. The characters have depth and Willesford's ear for ironic dialogue is masterly. This story may be marred for contemporary readers by the casual racism that reflects the values of 1950s America. By contrast, the much tighter Wild Wives involves casual homophobia and a less complex protagonist. ( )